Expand your reach

In addition to posting your job on your website/government system and to our Public Interest Technology job board, meet candidates where they are by posting your job where they might already be looking. Here are some additional ideas:

• LinkedIn, $195 for 30 day post
• Indeed, free for limited usage, $5+/day
• Idealist for social impact positions, $90 per posting
• AngelList for technology positions, free
• Design Gigs for Good for design positions, free
• Attend your local brigade (volunteer group) to present on the roles you are hiring for
• Post on social media to get the word out

Social media best practices

Social media is a really great way to get the word out about your job. Use these sample Tweets/LinkedIn posts to get the word out:

• “We’re hiring for a [job title]! Apply here [link to job posting]”
• “Join our team, and help us [mission]. [link to job posting]”

Here are some social media guidelines:

• Use existing hashtags and avoid creating new ones
• Find other government agencies or organizations that are doing this well, emulate them and the language/hashtags they use
• Use 2-3 hashtags at most, more than that has diminishing returns
• Here are a few examples of some good hashtags to use: #civictech, #civicinnovation, and anything related to the position such as #servicedesign, #UX, #datascience
• When tagging another Twitter account, double check the account is still active and is the correct entity (tagging the wrong account happens all the time)
• Whenever possible, use images as these types of posts generally receive more engagement
• Posting at 9am PST is a great time to post on Twitter as it encompasses many time zones where people are already on social media
• Additional resources we love: MailChimp’s writing for social media style guide

Online marketing best practices

Online marketing is a broad topic with several core components. There are a few actions you can take to get the word out about your organization, team and open positions, and expand your reach:

• Content marketing:
  • Start a blog or share some knowledge/findings for free
  • Louisville’s Office of Performance Management and Innovation Medium page is a great example
  • Set up an editorial calendar to help you keep your content fresh. This will allow outsiders to know you’re still active
  • If you come across content that resonates with you, write about it to build relationships by linking to the author’s article or Twitter account
  • Share your content on social media following the social media best practices we outlined earlier
• Social media marketing:
  • Join groups on LinkedIn to expand your network
  • Ask questions and answer questions on LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook to expand your network
  • Stay in the conversation

Other online marketing methods include:

• Email marketing
• Lead generation
• Organic search marketing
• Conversion rate optimization
• Analytics
• Paid search marketing
• Read more about them in this guide to online marketing

Improve your job descriptions

Continue improving your job descriptions by including these 5 themes in your postings:

• Context: Why is this department sit in the larger context of the city?
• Position: What is this position’s salary, location, job title, purpose?
• Qualifications: What technical expertise (platforms/infrastructure) is used?
• Responsibilities: What specifically will this person be doing in their day to day?
• Team: Who will this person be working with everyday?

On our job board, we’ve seen a significant increase in engagement for job postings that include one sentence that describes the impact your organization or department has. What would you tell someone to get them excited about the role?

Here are some examples:

• “Tackling the city's systemic challenges with the goal of generating impact to improves the lives of residents” (Baltimore, Mayor’s Office of Innovation)
• “Build tech that has a direct impact on children joining loving families” (Binti)
• “Help us create practical policies, processes, and tools to help cities step into the 21st century” (Metro Ideas Project)
• “Help thousands of low-income families find government and social services to overcome poverty” (One Degree)

Overall areas of confusion in job descriptions include:

• Not finding the right balance between including too much information and not enough information
• Extensive use of acronyms
• Extensive use of internal compliance language